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Immediately upon arrival in the city of Uyuni, we booked ourselves a three-day tour through the Salt Flats and neighboring lagoons ending in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and hopped in a 4x4 with four other women- two from South Korea and two from Germany. The first day was spent driving through and exploring the Salt Flats which were absolutely amazing. The flats are technically a lake that is covered by an 8 to 15 meter crust of salt that looks like snow in some spots and desert in others. They even cut salt block to make shelters, much like the igloos ice blocks we all know about at home. We slept in a salt hotel the first night. The walls, beds frames, floors and chairs were all made of salt. Very cool!!
The second day was spent exploring different lagoons in southern Bolivia, each one a different color due to the minerals bubbling up from the earth. One was blue from cobalt, another green from a cobalt/sulfur mix, there was some borax, sulfates and even an arsenic lagoon, colored reds and yellows. Several of the lagoons were also home to flamingoes and the endangered vicunas (similar to mini-alpacas). The altitudes were very high (up to 5000 meters), making breathing a little difficult, but thanks to the prior weeks of acclimatization in Peru, we handled it very well. While there was no actual snow other than on the mountain tops, the mounds of borax and chalk gave the same illusion, and we had a white Xmas after all.
We woke up at 4am the next morning hung over and exhausted from the previous night's festivities; Dair and I had pulled out my speakers, purchased a few bottles of wine and hosted and impromptu Xmas dance party to cheer up our homesick friends. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but there was some regret that morning. We headed up to check out the geysers for sunrise. They were very smelly, but amazing to see. Then we said good-bye to our buddies and headed into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. We got off the bus and promptly ran into some American friends we had made in the Colca Canyon. Needless to say, they were more than a little surprised to see us since last they'd heard we were heading North, but a lovely surprise nonetheless. It always amazes me what a small community the back-packing world is!!
We had a few hours to wander around the lovely town of San Pedro de Atacama and then we were off to the mysterious, and previously unheard of, Iquique for a little sun time and a flight further south. Happy Xmas to us!!
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